As an entrepreneur who puts themselves out there, you’re being judged anyway… so just be yourself!

Transcription:

Angela: All right. We are here live today.

Scott: Yeah.

Angela: We're actually using third party software called BeLive.tv and it's our first time using it. We just kind of like both fit in, jumped right into using BeLive.tv. So if there are any glitches, I apologize. I want to know if everyone can. I'm just sorry and I'm referring down to my phone to see. But I want-

Scott: So Michelle and Christine is here. Guys, just let us know if you can hear us. We're trying to use this BeLive thing. "I can hear." Okay, great.

Angela: Awesome.

Scott: Angela always springs these things on me last minute. She's like, "Let's go live this morning but let's do it completely different." So now I'm looking at the camera down here. We're using BeLive.tv today which is a third party app that integrates with Facebook and Ang is doing an online course for our members right now so we figure we should start using it as well. So this morning, we've been scrambling around, trying to figure it out. You don't use it on your phone but you might be able to but this morning we are using a web cam so that's way I was looking down here before at my computer but we need to look at the web cam.

Angela: Anyway-

Scott: It's really cool so far what I've seen even though I was freaking out a little bit. But it's really cool. You can see the comments on here and everything.

Angela: Yeah, the really neat thing and that's not what our topic is today but the really neat thing about BeLive.tv is it's great for interviews or talk show formats. We'll talk about that another week. We'll do maybe a little walkthrough another week.

Scott: But what we were going to talk about was we were at the Leading the Way test camp in [inaudible 00:01::53] Leading the Way event last Friday. There was a lot of great speakers and lot of great workshops at that event and there is two in particular that I want to just talk about briefly and one was [Darlene Bats 00:02:05], Love Darlene. I think she's amazing. Her talk was on who's driving your bus. It was a great talk about as entrepreneurs or even people in general, it's really important to know who's driving your bus. Sometimes we do things and make decisions because what we think people want us to do and we realize decades later that someone else has been driving our bus and hopefully we break out of that and we take control of our lives or our businesses.

But the one thing that I found really interesting in the talk is that Darlene had mentioned is we all seem to be careful that we're not driving other people's buses. She was talking more about I think mothers and parents with children, I think a lot of us parents have this tendency to try and drive our children's school bus, tell them what to do, go for school for this, do that, save money this way, live in this city. All those different things but-

Angela: Don't ever leave home.

Scott: Yeah, don't ever leave home. But what really struck me is I think also as husbands and wives, we need to be careful that we're not driving our wife's bus or husband's bus. Ang and I work very closely. Husband and wife team in work, obviously, and also at home. So it's something that I can a little more aware because that's how I think things should be done in our business. But what I've noticed is sometimes when I let go a bit and let Ang sort of do her own thing, amazing things happen which brings me to the next speaker which was Ang who spoke at Leading the Way and she did and amazing talk on fear and how overcame fear. She's going to talk a bit about it but I just want to let you know I was really proud.

You did an amazing and you asked me for some feedback and I gave her like two little pointers and there was other things I wanted to do but I didn't and I just let her do it. People loved it. She did a great job and she got a lot of feedback afterwards, how great her talk was. She was even some people's favorite speaker at the event. So that's what I wanted to share with you guys. Tessa, if you do watch this video, another great event. I know the format changed a bit this year. I loved it.

Angela: Yeah, it was awesome.

Scott: I thought it was great. Workshops were fantastic. It wasn't even my team. Oh my gosh.

Scott: Yeah, but there's some people who will know and you will know what I'm talking about. Anyway, Ang. We talked this morning before we were getting live. You had some ideas that you wanted to share with people and I'm going to let you take it away.

Angela: Okay, cool. So those who weren't there on Friday, I want to let you guys know, I actually, believe it or not, have a fear of public speaking. It's so easy, like anything in this world when you're behind a camera and there's no physical people in front you. Some people really thrive on that physical, having people in front of them and they really can use their energy. But that is a fear of mine, right? Because I have a fear of being judged. I have a fear of making mistakes and then if I make a mistake and people don't laugh in the right spot or if ... I actually had anxiety because my whole talk, I am like, "Well, this is about me. What if people, what if this is only my fear and nobody understands and the whole point gets missed."

Like I had all of these fears about public speaking because when you're up in front of people live, much like here, even though we can delete the video after, we can never take it back. So even though people are leaving at the end of the day, I can never take back what I said and I had a huge anxiety and fear over that but it's actually one of the reasons that I volunteered myself to do it, that I put my name in the hat to do it, was to get over that. So I'm going to try to summarize my 10 or 15-minute talk was about in about one minute.

When I was five, I watched Jaws and I'm sure I was with the babysitter. I don't even know if parents know unless they're watching these but I watched Jaws when I was five. That moment in my life, that experience changed the next 30 years. I was afraid to go in natural water. I was great in pools. I could swim. I was a great swimmer. Great in pools but put me in a lake, river or ocean and forget about it. I was terrified, even in going to Long Point and going to Lake Erie. I was afraid of getting eaten by a shark. It's just an image that was in my mind every single time I step into the water. So this carried throughout my life. I mean, we're not talk when I was six or seven, we're talking when I was 30, 31, 32.

All of this fear had carried through my life and we talk about driving ... That movie drove my bus in having fear of water. There was nothing real substantiating it. So eventually, actually Scott and I got married in Cuba. While I was there, my dad and my son and my friends and my family, we're all going in and out of the water. Some people were snorkeling. They were just having a really good time and I was stuck, and I say, my 10 toes were firmly planted in the sand at the end of the ocean. I wouldn't go in. But it was that moment that I was like, "I need to get over this." I want to go in there. It's not that I don't want to do it. I'm just afraid to and the fear was holding me back.

So year after year after year, I got further in. I eventually got waste deep and that's when I started snorkeling, meaning I put the mask on my face and plunged my face in the water with my feet still standing in the ocean. But my point is I got further. Until eventually, I went in water over my head. I jumped off a boat and went snorkeling. Obviously, there were steps that happened in between. Lots of baby steps. Like years, probably 10 years of baby steps. Now, I am making arrangements to get my scuba or PADI certificate, hopefully in December if we're going to [Rotenen 00:08:05].

Scott: Or sooner. We'll see.

Angela: Or sooner. We'll see. So my whole point and this is my fear of is we can take that analogy and use it for our business, right? What things make us afraid to do things in our business? For us, it's video production. We have a lot of clients who we teach how to do video production. We teach them how to do it with their smartphone and we see they're not doing it because they have a fear. I think there is a few things that play, right, is the fear of being judged is the biggest one and the fear of saying something wrong, the fear of sounding stupid or looking stupid. In our business, if we don't take those chances, we're never going to be able to move forward, right? I

talked in the talk that I did on Friday, the analogy I used, if you got 10 toes firmly planted in the sand at the edge of the ocean and you see tons of people having success in the ocean and they're snorkeling and they're having fun and they're having a great time, how is keeping your 10 toes in the sand serving you? So those people, and when you think about it in business, when you look at those people who are so successful and they're so amazing, we don't know how many steps they took to get there but we definitely know they took steps. You have to do that, right? Does that make sense?

Scott: Absolutely.

Angela: So I want to go back to the fear of being judged, right? Because I think that's the big one. I've seen it lately. Rosie says, "I'm so sad I missed you on Friday." Hey, Rosie. But I know you took a trip recently. Did you snorkel? I'd like to know. Missed you guys too. So sorry, I'm looking at some of the comments here.

Scott: I'm playing with a feature. That's so cool. You can share those comments. That's pretty cool.

Angela: Yeah, right on the screen. There you go. So fear of being judged. Let me go back to that for a sec.

Scott: Sorry.

Angela: Because what I've seen lately is people, not only stop doing things like video or public speaking or putting themselves out there, making great alliances, getting outside of their safe group of people and meeting new people but I'm seeing people are afraid to put their stuff out there because they're afraid of having it stolen. There's lots of different fears we have, right? So let's talk, I'm sorry, I'm all over the place. I'm going to go back to being judged. I want you to know that you're absolutely going to be judged. People are going to disagree with you. People are going to try to make themselves sound smarter than you or say things that might devalue ... They're trying to devalue what you said to make themselves look smarter. But that's actually a story we're telling in their head.

Because even with social media, with their videos, maybe people are saying things to you because they just want to be added into the conversation. If you think about it, if you're around the table at dinner and you're talking about, I don't know, a snorkeling experience, then someone across tells about a better snorkeling experience, are they having a conversation with you or are they trying to one up you? I think in our minds, we're all, "Oh, they're just trying to one up me," but really, it's just a conversation. We're the only ones who think that their story is better than ours. They might have thought ours was better.

So this whole misconception of judgment and what it means, first of all, can be totally misunderstood. So I want you guys to think about that, especially if you're not putting yourself out there. If you're not doing a lot of video, if you're not doing a lot of public speaking, why not? If you are an entrepreneur and you are running a business, why aren't you putting yourself out there? Because it's what it really takes to get to the next level, right? In baby steps maybe but it's what it really takes. That make sense?

Scott: Makes sense to me.

Angela: So the other thing, recently, I've been seeing a lot of, I don't know what I'm ... Borrowed content where let's say today we're doing this talk on fear and judgment, putting yourself out there and I'm not saying Tessa does this but I'm going to use Tessa as an example. Let's say next week, Tessa does a live video and for those of you who don't know Tessa, you should so message me and I'll connect you. But Tessa runs our local chapter of Momprenuers and she's amazing. But she helps entrepreneurs as well in her business. So let's say next week she uses some of the content I created today and she does her own live. Am I going to be upset about that? Absolutely not.

I think that first of all, people are inspired by other people. Secondly, when you put yourself out there. When you ... I'm going to use the analogy and I learned this from a book called 10X by Grant Cardone and I don't know if any of you guys have read that, maybe a thumbs up if you have and if you haven't, I suggest you read it or do what I did which is audio book. But he says when you are afraid to put yourself out there, when you're afraid to shine bright, it doesn't serve. It only serves everyone else who's surpassing you, right? So you need to build your fire and you need to build your fire so high, so big, so bright that other people are going to come and warm themselves on your fire. Some of those people might be your competition and it's okay.

They might even steal an ember of that fire to start their own and that's okay because really, it just goes to show how your powerful your message is and how great you are at what you do if someone wants to borrow your content. I know it doesn't feel good sometimes but in some ways, it's a compliment, right?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talked a bit about this in our course. Because some people have a lot of difficulty coming up with ideas, "What am I going to do about every week?" Sometimes it's pretty daunting or you've done your first season. You're like, "What am I going to do videos on now?" So I think the same thing applies. Sometimes we get inspired or we read an article and we're like, "That's a great idea." It's okay to do a video or write a book based on that idea because what I find that's really interesting about it is it's a spark of ... It's a spark. It's inspiration. It's like, "You know what, I see ... If I saw this video that Ang is doing on judgment, I might do a video on judgment," and maybe I actually disagree with Angela and I'll do my own video. I don't think I would say Angela is wrong, I'm right.

But my point is is that there's your perspective, which is going to be very different than someone else's. So I think when you see these things online and you're inspired by a certain topic that relates to you as an expert, do a video or do a blog post on it but just make sure it's you. It is authentic to who are. I mean, we're definitely not [inaudible 00:14:40] plagiarizing here. Quite often, you can just take the topic and that's a great topic and you just take the topic, forget the content and you're an expert in your industry. Do your video or your blog post on that topic with your own personal perspective. That's what I do with a lot of my videos as well. Yeah, so.

Angela: Yeah, don't copy verbatim, right?

Scott: Yeah. You shouldn't. I personally feel you shouldn't have to. The more Ang and I get into this, we're getting more and more comfortable in front of the camera and just sort of speaking on topics like I think everyone once they start getting into doing videos or getting into doing writing, you'll find your voice. You can just take a topic and go with it. You shouldn't verbatim or plagiarize. You really shouldn't need to. It doesn't need to perfect. I don't want to go down another rabbit hole but that would be another good video. I mean, sometimes people won't do writing or won't do videos because they're so focused on being perfect. It's never going to be perfect. That was an obstacle that I had to get over.

Angela: Yeah, for sure. Some people do a video and they don't post it because it wasn't perfect, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Angela: The other thing about being judged and I want to mention this too is people absolutely all right going to judge you but it doesn't matter, right? They don't know, even if they do know you, their judgment, their comments don't actually matter. It's so easy I think for social media if we're talking about videos for a moment, if we're talking of posting a video on social media and someone posting a negative comment, again, I think it just means that because you're putting yourself out there, first of all, most people aren't going to be negative. Most people, unless your content is very, very, very controversial. But we're talking about entrepreneurs here and we're talking about businesses and the type of videos a business would post but so it's probably not going to be controversial.

So if someone is going to be negative, they're probably ... Again, because you're putting yourself out there, it's actually their insecurity and their fear that is causing that information to be posted and it shouldn't affect yours. So I want you to remember that for all of the negative posts in there, you're probably getting a thousand positive posts and things that have a positive influence or positive reaction against what you're doing. So people are going to say things. People are going to judge you. Yeah, that's great. It's you versus you, right? Are you going to let what other people say about you get in your head because that's their problem? That's their problem, not yours.

The funny thing is as soon as they're done typing it, even if ... What do you call these people who just like trolls.

Scott: Trolls, yeah.

Angela: Let's say just random troll picked up on a video and just was really negative. They're gone. They're not even thinking about that. They're just dropping a bomb and leaving. If people do not agree with you or don't like what you said, again, by the time they've thought about how they don't like it or they disagree with it, they're onto their stuff, right? They're lives are busy. They've thought about you. They've said their piece and they've left. Tomorrow, you're not even going to be a memory for them. So just some really important things.

Now, I want to hear from you guys. Who's on with me? What is your biggest fear in your business? When it comes to putting yourself out there or even within your business? Do you have a fear of not being successful and what does that mean? I'd love to hear from you guys. I don't know how many people we have. I'm not sure.

Scott: It's right here.

Angela: Oh five.

Scott: It's our new BeLive so we're getting used it. I love that you can share comments. I think that's really, really cool. While we're waiting for people to respond-

Angela: While we're waiting for people to respond, I think I was asked if you can put a logo and we can.

Scott: It was just Melissa, was it Melissa? No, it's Christine saying you can. You can add a logo.

Angela: Oh, she's saying yes, you can add a logo on comments so it's really great.

Scott: So yeah, your attendees are there.

Angela: So of my attendees, I want to know what your fears are in your and or in your life and if you have a fear of public speaking and how that works for you or against you. Michelle says that no one really cares to hear what she has to say. So I wasn't there for it but we recorded the video so I was your talk at last summer's event. It was so funny.

Scott: Michelle, your talk last year was my favorite talk last year.

Angela: It was so funny and so relevant. I thought it was amazing. You know what, I think if you ever, and I know you'll never get out of what you're doing, Michelle Watterson is the owner of CatNap Cottages. CatNap Cottage hosts these little condos for cats so when you're on vacation, they're well taken care of by Michelle. But if you ever got out of that, I want you to become a comedian. You're like one of the funniest people I know. I think you are so funny.

Scott: So can I address this?

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: So yeah, Michelle says, "That no one really cares to hear what I have to say." The only one point that I'll give on that is that as small business owners or entrepreneurs, we're so subjective in our business and we quite often we think what is this boring, mundane typical knowledge that you might have about cat behavior or feline behavior, someone like me who knows nothing about cats and maybe I've got, I've only had a cat for a year, some of that basic information to me is like mind blowing. It's like, "Wow, that's really cool. I think it implies to most businesses, people in finance, that work in finance or do mortgages like, "Oh, my stuff's so boring," but there's these little tips that you think are boring but when you're sharing with people who aren't experts in that field, they find it fascinating and interesting especially if it can help them.

So I think that's [inaudible 00:20:43] stories we tell ourselves, I mean, Michelle, that's a story you're telling yourself I think. I think all entrepreneurs and small business owners do that and we need to get over that and just realize that we have more knowledge than the average person in our field so you do have important things to say.

Angela: Yeah, for sure.

Scott: Anyway, did you have anything to say?

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: For Michelle?

Angela: No, I agree. I agree with you wholeheartedly. When we're in our own business and we're in it everyday and everyday and everyday, like you said, it just becomes mundane and we don't realize how powerful the information we have is and how much we can help someone else by sharing that information, like cat behaviors. I mean, how many times ... So we don't have a cat. We don't have one.

Scott: We had cats in our lives.

Angela: We had cats in our lives. But people are like, "Why doesn't my cat love me?" I bet you you can address that in 10 different ways that is your cat loves you but this is why you think it doesn't. I think you're absolutely an expert when it comes to cats and their behaviors and loving them. So I think that's it. Unless you guys have any other questions or fears that you want to bring up that we can help you with and if you post it, we can always address it later. We're going to wrap up. It's almost been 25 minutes here. That's a long time for a live video.

Scott: Yeah, well, we did start late today but a really cool thing about BeLive and I know Ang is going to do a live on this later, but you can schedule it ahead of time so people can start to get notified. I don't know if any of you got notified in advance but it does a countdown timer. But you can't schedule it within 11 minutes of when you want to go live. So we were scrambling the last minute, five minutes to 10 today so we had to set the broadcast for 10:05 so actually we're probably sitting at just about 21 minutes but just a good place to be, so.

Angela: Yeah. We like our lives to be 20 to 22 minutes.

Scott: Yeah, not too long, not too short, yeah.

Angela: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I want to challenge you guys to get out of your comfort zone, whether it's creating a video, whether it's offering to speak live somewhere.

Scott: Yeah, public speaking.

Angela: I want you to challenge yourself. Even if it's a baby step. Do something that makes you a little scared and I promise you it will help your business. All right. You guys take care. See you next week and have a great day.